


Nothing Good Happens After Midnight

by realsorceror



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Aliens, Friendship, Horror, Humor, Mass Effect 1, Military Science Fiction, No Overarching Plot, Outer Space, Spooky, dimensional beings, drunk people, short story series, somewhat nonsensical, weird POV/narrator, weird cult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 13:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realsorceror/pseuds/realsorceror
Summary: An ongoing series of thriller/horror/mystery shorts featuring your favorite squadmates from the first Mass Effect game. Semi-regular updates. Ft. various different characters.#1. Garrus and Wrex go out and have fun. It doesn't go well.





	Nothing Good Happens After Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> #1. Garrus and Wrex go out and have fun. It doesn't go well.

SHIP'S LOG

IN DOCK, SSV NORMANDY REPORTS: DRIVE CORE IN STANDBY, DAMAGED PORT WING UNDERGOING REPAIR, NO OTHER CASUALTIES. NONESSENTIAL CREW AT LIBERTY. COMMANDING OFFICER ABOARD. CREW INVOLVED INCIDENT REPORTED BY CITADEL SECURITY FORCES. INVESTIGATION TO FOLLOW.

 ***

FROM: CMDR J. Shepard, SSV Normandy SR-1

TO: RADM T.M. Hackett, Commander Fifth Fleet

INVESTIGATIVE REPORT – CITADEL, C-SEC CASE# 11B0004510239

INCIDENT LOCATION: LOWER WARDS

TIME: 0239 CITADEL STANDARD TIME

INVOLVED PERSONNEL: GARRUS VAKARIAN, URDNOT WREX (INDEPENDENTLY HIRED MILITARY CONTRACTORS)

REPORT DETAILS:

<see attached interview recording:>

 

“Is this the right way to go about it? No. Do I have another choice? Yes. What should I do?”

“You can get another beer if you want it, I guess.”

“Thanks, Wrex.”

“Any time. You need any more advice, you know where I'll be.”

What a great guy.

You go get another beer. The human bartender is disinterested in your life story. This is not the first beer you've gotten, or even the eighth, and she has already heard it. You return to your table. Wrex is still there, regarding the blue plastic surface as if it's going to divulge some useful information to him. You think about asking him if it has, but that seems a little personal. You are Garrus Vakarian, and you pride yourself on your tact.

You sit down, attempt to set your beer down on the table, and miss entirely. The glass hits the deck with a clang. You lean on the table and reach down to pick it up.

The much-abused plastic furniture is not capable of holding up your weight. It falls over. You, the tables and chairs, a lot of empties, and one full glass end up splattered on the deck.

“Oops,” you hear yourself say. “I'm drunk.”

“Nice,” says Wrex. He is still sitting in his chair. You're frankly jealous of his superior liquor-holding abilities, but he also weighs two hundred pounds more than you do.

“Here come the cops,” he adds.

“ _We_ are the cops,” you say, and pick yourself up from the mess of glass and furniture. C-Sec have, indeed, arrived. You stare the Turian sergeant down blearily.

“We're on the _Normandy_ ,” you say. “You can't arrest us.”

 

<interview paused.

SHEPARD: Did you really say that?

VAKARIAN: Uhhh..yeah.

SHEPARD: You dumbass.

_brief silence. Someone sighs wearily._

SHEPARD: Whatever. Keep talking.

interview continued:>

 

“...we aren't here to arrest you, moron.” The cops are talking. “We were just passing by and thought we'd stop in and kick you out.”

You stand up. The sergeant looks pretty blurry. He only has two goons, you think. Or maybe he has one and you're seeing double.

“I'm a _war hero._ ”

“O-kay.” It's Wrex; he grabs your right arm. And most of your shoulder area. “We'll be going now, officers. No trouble.”

“..but my drink,” you hear yourself saying pathetically.

“ _No_ trouble.”

Those extra two hundred pounds come in handy; you are incapable of resisting Wrex's stubborn movement toward the door and onwards, down a ladderwell and into a dimly lit Lower Wards alleyway.

“C-Sec is stupid,” you announce.

“You used to work for them.” Wrex unexpectedly lets you go. You stagger. A convenient bulkhead breaks your momentum before you fall over.

“Yeah,” you say. The passageway seems to waver slightly in it's position in reality and then resolves itself into a normal orientation. You belch. “What now?”

Wrex appears to consider, but you still aren't good at reading Krogan facial expressions and you aren't really sure. He may also be angry or constipated.

“I dunno. Wanna go bust up some more stuff?”

“Yeah,” you say.

 

You go to another bar. Music pounds out of hidden speakers in the walls. Wrex looks interestedly up at the ceiling.

“I shot this place up once,” he announces. “With the commander.”

“I remember.”

A man appears. He stares at us out of his weird, pale human eyeballs. He is looking mostly at Wrex.

“You!”

“Huh?”

“You're the one who – who – ugh.”

You and Wrex stare at him. He looks lost.

You slug back the pair of shots on the table in front of you. The human clasps his head in his hands for a few seconds and then appears to return, briefly, to reality.

“You're the one they talk about, I saw you – on the news -”

Bouncers appear from somewhere. They look harassed.

“This guy bothering you?”

“No,” you say. You are mildly interested in his ongoing mental collapse.

“Yes,” says Wrex.

The lead bouncer is a Krogan. He stares at Wrex for a moment and sneers in disgusted recognition.

“ _You._ You dumb shit. What do you think you're doing in here?”

“We are drinking,” you announce. You stand up. So does Wrex. The human sits down on the floor and begins ranting at the top of his lungs.

“ _You're the one they talk about you're the catalyst they need your help I saw you on the news-_ ”

The bouncer yells over his sudden interruption.

“Yeah, no shit dummy. You can stay. _He_ gotta leave.”

“He isn't going anywhere I'm not allowed,” you yell back. Wrex looks touched. You think.

“Fine,” says the bouncer. Four – or maybe two – others slouch up out of the distance and stand behind him. They do not look displeased about the chance to fight someone. “If that's how you wanna play this. Turian scum.”

“Ha ha,” you say. You get the first hit in, and Wrex piles in after you. The horde of bouncers converge and next thing you know you're out in the alley outside the bar with no enemy in sight and a crack in your head carapace.

“That should hurt,” Wrex says, looming in your face. You blink up into his eyes.

“Eh, it happens,” you say. “It'll grow back. No worries.”

You belch. His face recedes with a disgusted scowl.

You're still sitting on the deck a minute or two later, enjoying private thoughts, when that human stirs and groans. You turn and stare at him.

“We should go,” says Wrex, “Before the pigs show up again.” You open your mouth to respond or maybe puke.

“ _Getupgetupokay it's coming._ ” The human interrupts you. He sits up. He is bleeding from the mouth. You think maybe that is a bad sign, but you aren't an expert in human physiology.

“- _comingfor youuuu-_ ”

He passes out. Wrex pokes him lightly. He shrugs.

“Okay,” he says. “We should probably go before we wind up in the drunk tank. Or worse.”

“Uh yeah,” you respond. He strolls over and lifts you up by the back of the neck. You head off into the darkness together.

 

Some time later, you are both lost in the endless passages of the Lower Wards. You can hear yourself chattering like it's coming out of someone else's mouth.

“-and Shepard's great,” you're saying, “Best thing t' ever happen to me. She's a loose cannon, I mean, and it kind of rubbed off on me a bit, but still, you know, she's a straight shooter, can't really just _hang out_ with her – anyway, I'm glad you're here.”

Wrex blinks.

“What? You gotta crush or something?”

“On her or on you?”

“Ugh,” he says, and lightly shoves you into a bulkhead. You collapse in a heap. It's during the time that he is dragging you up off the deck again that you see the light.

“What's _that_?” you say. You think maybe it's a hallucination. It's around a corner and it reminds you of lightning striking over and over again.

Wrex drops you again and stares.

“Electrical fire.”

“No,” you say, “It's-”

 

The source of the flashing comes around the corner. It's difficult to describe; it both flashes and manages to float ethereally. It looks somewhat familiar, but you can't place where you've seen something sort of like it before. It floats gently past you to Wrex's position and lashes out a blinding appendage and _touches_ him.

“Oh,” he says. The light disappears. He turns to you with it somehow glowing through his skin and says..

“You gotta crush or something?”

“No?”

He turns away and shambles off down the passage.

“ _No come back,_ ” you say, woozily, and scramble after him.

 

He is going down and down, past even the wards to the maintenance hallways and cargo storage rooms. The transients that live down in the maze stare at you in the strange light he's giving off. They don't approach, but some of them follow. Wrex is talking as he walks.

“They come and go like they're sleeping and it watches them go back and forth but they don't see it and it doesn't touch, it knows what's out there coming but they can't see it. It can see. We escaped it years ago. We left. They came for us and they failed. We can show you how to escape. We can show you how to escape. We can show you how to -”

You reach the end of the road. It's a scuttle and it has ESCAPE painted around it in big, red Turian letters. You think it's weird that red is the settled-on psychological color for dangerous things. Even the humans had chosen it long before they ever found the Mass Relays.

There's a warning placard next to the scuttle:

“ _Warning – authorized personnel only. Vacuum beyond this point._ ”

It's locked, but a lock hasn't been made that can keep a determined Krogan out. Wrex lays a hand on the opening mechanism.

“Wait,” you say. He turns jerkily.

“-we can show you how to escape.”

The transients are behind us. One, an Asari, stares at me glassily.

“It chose him,” she says. You try to find appropriate words to express your drunken confusion. You give up.

“He can't go out there,” you finally say. “He'll die.”

“It's going to escape,” she announces. “It has to show us.”

“He'll - “ you turn back to Wrex's glowing form. “He'll die.”

“It chose him.”

“Pick me instead,” you say, and to your surprise it does.

 

You see things you don't really understand. You see a world made of not quite water and not quite shapes. The shapes are blue. They turn green when a storm blows up. Or just arrives; there's no actual wind. The light from it – it's a _light storm_ – makes new beings appear. They are like electrical fires. They float along. They are living their lives, you realize; you are seeing a memory, and now you are going back in time. You are now on a terrestrial planet. The lights now have bodies that remind you of a kind of Earth creature you've seen in commercials. The creatures have slimy brown skin and can jump. They make croaking noises to talk.

You think the Earth fauna they resemble are called _cats._

The cats are changing. They build cities. They build ships that go to space. They conquer more planets. They live forever.

And then something familiar appears. It comes from the stars. It looks like a giant black hand. The cats usually eat insects, but they can't eat this. It destroys anything it touches. It seems to be coming for everything that exists.

And _then -_

It comes for you. You see it's blackness. You can't escape. You take a jagged sword while it's coming inexorably after you and you stab yourself before it can eat you, too -

You are back among the shapes, blue and green, and the lights.

And then you understand.

“You think there's only one way out,” you say. It agrees. You see all the people of the galaxy. It somehow knows them all. You think about it. You know what it wants you to do.

But you aren't the kind of person who does what other people want.

“No,” you say. It plays you an image of the hand closing over you and everyone else. Everyone on the Citadel, your home. Everyone on the _Normandy._ Everyone everywhere; your entire version of reality.

You don't buy it.

“There's still a chance,” you say. It wants you to open the scuttle, but you won't. There's a supreme struggle, and then suddenly it – gives up.

It agrees with you.

It feels regret for what it did.

Then you're free.

 

You and Wrex sit and stare at each other.

An alarm is going off somewhere. You recognize the tone. It's an intrusion alarm. The homeless people have vanished. The strange light is gone. C-Sec officers pour out of the woodwork, bristling with sub-machine guns and body armor.

One recognizes you and sighs.

“You two assholes again,” he says irritably, and addresses his cohorts.

“No, they aren't terrorists. Just some boozing Earth Navy spacers. Take 'em away to sober up.”

You don't try to fight the handcuffs. Wrex hauls himself upright because the cops aren't strong enough to lift him.

“Yeah,” he says, “Let's just not talk about what just happened.”

“Ever again,” you agree.

_Ever._

 

<silence>

SHEPARD: So you're saying that you were possessed by an-

VAKARIAN: Extra-dimension alien being.

SHEPARD: Never heard that excuse before.

WREX: Yeah, it sounds crazy, right?

SHEPARD: And it wanted you to – what?

WREX: Save the Citadel from Reapers.

SHEPARD: By – spacing everyone inside.

VAKARIAN: Yes.

<silence>

SHEPARD: Let's never talk about this again.

<recording end.>

 

INCIDENT CONCLUSION:

VAKARIAN AND WREX RESTRICTED TO NORMANDY FOR REMAINDER OF DOCKING CYCLE. NO FURTHER DISCIPLINARY ACTION DEEMED NECESSARY.

INVESTIGATING OFFICER SIGNATURE:

 

_JANE SHEPARD, COMMANDER, SSV NORMANDY_

 

_***_

 

RE: INVESTIGATIVE REPORT, CITADEL

 

_Received, thanks._

 

Respectfully,

ADM. T.M. HACKETT

COMMANDER, FIFTH FLEET

“ _Sic Transit Gloria”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> next time: Tali stands watch.


End file.
